Love amidst the Nightmares
by Jaclyn840
Summary: Post-Mockingjay, Pre-Epilogue. Peeta comforts Katniss from her nightmares. Canon/Smut


This time it's Clove.

_My arms are helplessly pinned down by her boots as she kneels over my head. Her fist is jammed into my mouth and no matter how hard I bite, she smiles back at me; a wicked smile, with eyes full of hate as she taunts me in my last moments. I try screaming, but no words come. I feel the coolness of her knife on my cheek give way to searing pain as she carves my lips open. No one comes to save me; No Thresh, No Peeta. In the corner of my eye I see Cato smiling at me with the same sadistic smile and look of hatred in his eyes. She's almost done now; my eyes flood with the scarlet hue of blood, and the blood that has filled my mouth begins to spill over onto my cheek. I feel her weight shift off my body right before she drives a knife into my chest. _

I scream myself awake, my face lined with cold sweat. The sheer vividness of the dream causes me to frantically touch my face, half-expecting to find missing eyelids or ears. There's no way I'm going to be able to sleep now, as my heart is pounding and my lungs are ready to burst from hyperventilating the warm summer air. The smell of primroses on my window sill brings me back to reality as I hear my front door creak open.

"Katniss?"

"Oh Peeta, I'm so sorry. I didn't expect you to be able to hear me from next door."

"I can hear your sobs all the way from the Capitol, a scream this close shouldn't be a problem"

"Hold me."

He slips into bed with me and holds me as I recount to him the Feast of the Hunger Games: the unbridled hatred in the Clove's eyes as she taunted me and the sheer terror of feeling someone slowly cutting my lips open. He tells me about his time in the Career Pack: how Clove and Cato would hunt squirrels and skin them alive just to hear the squeaks of the animal slowly dying. We talk about how traumatic their times in the Career training centers must have been for them to become so unhinged, before our words drift to Brutus and Enobaria and then...

Silence.

We're unwilling to go any further out of the unspoken fear that he would remember. Instead, he clasps my hands around my waist and presses his face into my hair. I close my eyes and imagine myself in the train again; the nights on the Victory tour when he was always around to comfort me - a constant presence in my sea of tumultuous dreams. As we begin to drift off to sleep in the silence, I feel his hand slip from mine as he runs it along my hips. I am only wearing a nightshirt; which has gotten hitched up to my waist in the midst of all my trashing about. So when he passes his hand down my thighs it causes a tingle to run up my body. He strokes my legs softly, in the same manner Prim used to stroke Buttercup to sleep. The first wisps of desire begin to stir in my body, either from the feeling of his touch or the closeness of his body to mine. I feel his hands pause and slip back into my grasp, and with the comfort of his touch taken away, I whisper in the darkness

"Don't stop"

He edges closer to me as his hands move elsewhere. To my ribs this time, as he edges higher and higher before finally running them up my breasts. I let out a sigh as he caresses me there - a lifetime of kneading dough has given a soothing firmness to his touch. We twine our legs together as he runs his lips along my neck, and warm feelings of desire have now crept into every crevice of my body. I don't resist when he moves to hitch the nightshirt up over my head. Now I'm sitting naked with my back to the wall, facing him, eager and hungry for his touches. He complies with the desire that has now filled the silence between us, and runs the edge of his knuckles along my collarbone before teasingly stroking my breasts. It is not enough, so I shift forward to kiss him while taking his hands into mine and placing them onto my breasts. I hold onto his neck as I lie back, beckoning him to kiss me further. Before long he has moved on to my ears and neck, and the only answer he gets are the whimpers of pleasure that escape my lips. The fervency of my desire has outpaced the speed of his agonizingly slow kisses and before long I am gripping him by the hair and pleading

"Peeta...please..."

He hears the sound of desperation in my voice and lies next to me, pulling me close. We rub our necks together, and I feel his hands travel further south. My mouth is ajar as he finds my most intimate place. We kiss again, although I am having difficulty concentrating on where to put my lips as it is both dark and my brains are scrambled eggs from the feeling of his fingers ever so delicately grazing the lips of my womanhood. I hold his face in my hands, his eyes glistening with the same desire that has now completely saturated my being, and my eyes roll back as he slips a finger inside me.

I paw at his shirt, dying for him to get it off. He undresses silently by the bed and I immediately reach for him there when he slips back. He struggles to form words with his mouth before being silenced by a kiss. We lie there in silence punctuated only by the sounds of our arousal as we caress each other's most intimate parts. He sits up with his back to the wall and I move over to straddle him. There is a tension between us as we both know where this has been leading up to the whole time. He runs a finger along my spine and touches my face.

"Katniss...I..."

"Please Peeta, I want you now, I want you inside me."

He looks at me with a confused face, struggling to find the words to communicate his thoughts; but it is too late - I have taken him inside me. We both cry out from the feeling of it all, the intimacy, the pleasure, the closeness, and we seal our consummated desire with a kiss.

"We have never done this before, Real or not Real?"

"Real"

He smiles and brings my head onto his shoulder as I take in the feeling of him inside me. For a while we embrace, the sheer pleasure of our act of love rendering us immobile. He is the first to move, holding my hips and shifting me upwards ever so slightly. Every small movement brings forth cries of pleasure from both our lips. I hold on to his head as I buck my hips against him. He dips his head down and kisses my breasts as we make love. With each shift of my weight against him I feel myself brimming ever so much with pleasure, and I know now the inevitable would take place; what I've been wanting so much to experience with him ever since the Quarter Quell. I lean back to gain leverage in my final moments before I overflow with pleasure, and the moonlight casts a shimmer on our bodies laced with perspiration, tangled in a mess of breathing and desire. I am close now, he moves forward to embrace me but in my quivering anticipation of a climax I push him back against the wall. I let out a shout of ecstasy right as the waves of pleasure fill my body. In my moment of climax I inadvertently lose control and run my nails across his chest. It only takes one glance at his vacant stare to know that I have done something horribly wrong to him.

"Peeta ... NO!"

I immediately latch onto his body and throw my head over his shoulder as he begins to shake uncontrollably. The rush of pleasure mixed with the sudden guilt of triggering his mental relapse is too much, and tears begin to stream down my cheek. His hands are locked around my arms now, so fierce and hard that as the anesthetic effect of a climax subsides, they begin to hurt. I sob violently even as he begins to loosen his grip, signaling the end of yet another series of visions from his tormented mind.

"Oh Peeta, I'm so sorry"

He looks into my eyes, the crazed look gone, now filled only with those familiar eyes of hope that I first gazed into when he threw me the bread. We embrace, my tears have now made a stream down his back. Before long I can feel the pitter patter of his tears along mine too. Amazingly, he hasn't lost any of his arousal, and amidst the silent sobs we finish making love.

I lie with my head on his chest as he strokes my hair. There is silence between us. This wasn't how I expected our first time to be. But then again, after all that we have gone through together, how could I expect anything else?


End file.
